PRWR 6470-01: Poetry Writing

(CRN 11583)

Wednesdays 6:30-9:15 p.m., EB 268

Spring 2007

Professor Robert W. Hill
Office Hours in EB 117: 5:45-6:15p, by appointment, and often online.
Phone and voicemail: (770) 423-6346
E-mails: rhill@kennesaw.edu AND rhill41@gmail.com (always send to both addresses)
RWH website at KSU: http://ksuweb.kennesaw.edu/~rhill
WebCT: http://courses.kennesaw.edu
Nicenet (CLASS KEY = 7Z88742P86): http://www.nicenet.org

This course is basically a workshop in which students write poems and submit them for weekly discussion. Designed to encourage the novice, as well as to challenge the experienced poet, the course is designed to develop students’ skills and to widen their access to the possibilities of contemporary poetry. Our reading list includes Chad Davidson’s Consolation Miracle, Greg Fraser’s Strange Pietà, John Frederick Nims’s Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry, and the daily offerings of The Writer’s Almanac (http://mail.publicradio.org/content/506927/forms/apm_signup.htm) and Poetry Daily (http://www.poems.com/update.htm). In-class written exercises are intended to produce more, different, and better poems than we might have written otherwise. Between class meetings, we will engage in online responses in WebCT and Nicenet. We will each produce a portfolio of eight poems, as well as one 500-word book review of a book published no earlier than 2002. We will also discuss such explicitly professional matters as publishing (self- and otherwise), networking, grants, and literary arts administration.

I suspect it is clear from the syllabus that regular and prompt attendance is crucial to one’s success in this course. Bring all three books with you to every class meeting.

Week One, January 10: Greg Fraser’s Strange Pietà.

Week Two, January 17: First poem due: villanelle; workshop classmates’ poems

Week Three, January 24: Second poem due: based on one of Greg Fraser’s poems as a structural (not subject-matter) model

Week Four, January 31: Chad Davidson’s Consolation Miracle; third poem due

Week Five, February 7: Ongoing, read-it-forever-as-apprentice-poets: John Frederick Nims’s Western Wind

Week Six, February 14: Fourth poem due; workshop classmates’ poems

Week Seven, February 21: Book review due; workshop classmates’ poems

Week Eight, February 28: Fifth poem due; first grade for response writings as of 6pm, March 2

Friday, March 2, Last day to withdraw without t academic penalty

SPRING BREAK, MARCH 3-9, NO CLASSES.

Week Nine, March 14: Sixth poem due

Week Ten, March 21: Seventh poem due

Week Eleven, March 28: Eighth poem due

Week Twelve, April 4: Workshop classmates’ poems

Week Thirteen, April 11: Workshop classmates’ poems

Week Fourteen, April 18: Portfolio due with eight poems as good as you can make them

Week Fifteen, April 25: LAST DAY OF CLASS: Second grade for response writings as of 6 p.m., April 25.

Final Exam, Taped Readings and Discussion, May 2, 5-7 p.m.

Nota bene:

“Response writing” includes in-class writing assignments and online responses. These will not be graded for grammar, spelling, mechanics, etc., but for their regular, conscientious contribution to our ongoing class discussion. Bluntly, either it's done or it isn't. These are graded twice, A or F, at midterm and at the end of the course. Unless otherwise instructed, you should post these responses to Nicenet or WebCT for classmates' edification and delight. Spend at least fifteen minutes twice a week online, writing thoughtful responses to our readings/viewings, class discussions, classmates' writings, etc., being sure all the while to maintain civil, respectful, considerate rhetoric in dealing with our co-workers in this important enterprise. (I will read everything but will intrude rarely.) Do NOT duplicate responses, but you must have roughly equal numbers of responses at each site.

[I must say that it grieves me to have to lay out such prescriptive, quantitative details. Writing these responses should become second nature, proceeding from your active engagement in this conversation of scholars. When and if you think of this assignment as a task to be completed only with numerical exactitude, you have already limited the way you can be drawn into genuine exchanges with your classmates and—to speak somewhat abstractly—with ideas. Engagement is really the key—honest engagement, which will inevitably produce more than the minimum of “assignments met.” As students of yourselves as well as of subject matter, you ought to feel some obligation to think about how and why you think the way you do. Playing on the relatively safe testing-ground of academia, you'll gain much more strength and subtlety by entering the game without the impediment of legalistic numbers-counting.—RWH, 10/17/03, ditto 8/27/06, 1/1/07]

Response writings serve several functions in this class. They can be the basis for class discussion when they are written at the beginning of class; they can guide your preparation for the following class when they are written during or at the end of the period. Those responses written at the end can also indicate to me material that needs further explanation or development at the next meeting. I expect you always to use those writing assignments to develop your ideas and to improve and strengthen your writing abilities. They serve you as an ongoing dialogue with yourself about issues raised in the course and in the process of our ideas' evolving in class discussions.

[This page last revised, January 7, 2007.—RWH]

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